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Rose For Emily Comparison

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In the short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor and “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner, a noticeable comparison is made between the two. Both short stories have alarming and horrifying plots that criticize southern corruption through the main character’s distorted view of the world. One is about a grandmother and her family being viciously murdered in cold blood, and the other is about a woman who murders her lover and then sleeps beside his decaying body. The two short stories both share uniquely similar characters and settings in the way that they view their own distorted reality of the South.
Firstly, racism, which is evident in both short stories, shows the influence that the southern culture has on the settings for the two protagonists. In “A Rose For Emily”, Emily is often bigoted for having a black servant, and is not shocked when “[the] negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn’t come back” (Faulkner). The man at the drugstore tricks the negro into selling Emily a lethal dose of poison, so that he himself will not be to blame for the murder that is to take place. This shows how many people at the time view darker skin color as an opportunity to avoid any blame for a crime because most people’s view of race is distorted anyway and often associated with crime. Faulkner condemns Emily for …show more content…

This shows how the grandmother looks down upon the black race which ultimately makes her arrogant of her own race. In doing so, the grandmother ends up getting killed because of her attitude towards those who she feels are inferior to her. Emily and the grandmother both show qualities of racism that both authors criticize them for encouraging, even though it is the norm at the time and place that these short stories take

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